For about six years, I’ve asked for “diet cola” as opposed to any sort of brand name of a beverage.  It avoid the awkwardness of “I’d like a diet coke”, “is diet pepsi ok?” which I think starts the meal on a negative note and skips the question “do you serve coke or pepsi products” which doesn’t work anyway for those four restaurants that still serve RC cola or Tab.  Recently there’s been an uptick in servers who reply to “diet cola” with “is diet (brand name) ok?”  Sure, of course it’s fine, you’re probably just verifying that diet pepsi is ok and not making a tacit admission that you hve no clue what a cola is.

In the last three weeks, I have no less than twice been flatly told “we don’t have that” or “no” (to the question “can I have a diet cola”).  Then I have to root around for what product line they have and a diet cola of the appropriate type.  What’s next?  “Can I have some ketchup?”, “no, we only have Heinz” an exchange so ridiculous I’d begin toting my own condiments before having to deal with this.  Years from now, when the predictions of Idoicracy comes through sociologists and historians will ask try to find the road-sides to ruin, and in addition to the date that the Slip n’ Slide became an Olympic event (it’s what happens when you melt a louge curve) I will point to the fall of 2008 as the time when servers stopped knowing what cola was.

If anyone wants to go to an ether frollic I’ll be having a phosphate at the drug store reading the new serialized Fitzgerald in Collier’s.

I like to sing.  Sometimes this has worked in my favor while other times it has not.  Teejay Green, Val Green and I went out to dinner at La Fontana in Hatboro and after having chicken that made Gunnery Sgt. Hartman seem tender we walked back to my car and I was singing the opening few bars of Rhapsody in Blue, which has that pimp clarinet glissando in the beginning.  I was getting louder and louder until I rounded the corner of the restaurant and ran into a member of the wait crew who I’m sure though I was drunk as I figured I may as well sing louder.  On the way out, to prove that I may be an idiot, but at least a popular idiot, Teejay and I sang Petula Clark’s “Downtown” at the top of our lungs as we left the restaurant and raced through Hatboro.

I like to sing.  Sometimes this has worked in my favor while other times it has not.  Teejay Green, Val Green and I went out to dinner at La Fontana in Hatboro and after having chicken that made Gunnery Sgt. Hartman seem tender we walked back to my car and I was singing the opening few bars of Rhapsody in Blue, which has that pimp clarinet glissando in the beginning.  I was getting louder and louder until I rounded the corner of the restaurant and ran into a member of the wait crew who I’m sure though I was drunk as I figured I may as well sing louder.  On the way out, to prove that I may be an idiot, but at least a popular idiot, Teejay and I sang Petula Clark’s “Downtown” at the top of our lungs as we left the restaurant and raced through Hatboro.